In the college she had briefly attended, between coming home from space and being brought into Indian military headquarters in Hyderabad, she had quickly realized that intellectuals seemed to think that their life--the life of the mind, the endless self-examination, the continuous autobiography afflicted upon all comers--was somehow higher than the repetitive, meaningless lives of the common people.
Virlomi knew the opposite to be true. The intellectuals in the university were all the same. They had precisely the same deep thoughts about exactly the same shallow emotions and trivial dilemmas. They knew this, unconsciously, themselves. When a real event happened, something that shook them to the heart, they withdrew from the game of university life, for reality had to be played out on a different stage.
In the villages, life was about life, not about one-upmanship and display. Smart people were valued because they could solve problems, not because they could speak pleasingly about them. Everywhere she went in India, she constantly heard herself thinking, I could live here. I could stay among these people and marry one of these gentle peasant men and work beside him all my life.
And then another part of her answered, No you couldn't. Because like it or not, you are one of those university people after all. You can visit in the real world, but you don't belong there. You need to live in Plato's foolish dream, where ideas are real and reality is shadow. That is the place you were born for, and as you move from village to village, it is only to learn from them, to teach them, to manipulate them, to use them to achieve your own ends.
But my own ends, she thought, are to give them gifts they need: wise government, or at least self-government.
And then she laughed at herself, because the two were usually opposites. Even if an Indian ruled over Indians, it was not self-government, for the ruler governed the people, and the people governed the ruler. It was mutual government. That's the best that could be aspired to.
Now, though, her pilgrim days were over. She had returned to the bridge where the soldiers stationed to protect it and the nearby villagers had made a kind of god of her.
She came back without fanfare, walking into the village that had taken her most to heart and falling into conversation with women at the well and in the market. She went to the washing stream and lent a hand with the washing of clothes; someone offered to share clothing with her so she could wash her dirty traveling rags, but she laughed and said that one more washing would rub them into dust, but she would like to earn some new clothing by helping a family that had a bit they could spare for her.
"Mistress," said one shy woman, "did we not feed you at the bridge, for nothing?"
So she was recognized.
"But I wish to earn the kindness you showed me there."
"You have blessed us many times, lady," said another.
"And now you bless us by coming among us."
"And washing clothes."
So she was still a god.
"I'm not what you think I am," she said. "I am more terrible than your worst fear."
"To our enemies, we pray, lady," said a woman.
"Terrible to them, indeed," said Virlomi. "But I will use your sons and husbands to fight them, and some of them will die."
"Half our sons and husbands were already taken in the war against the Chinese."
"Killed in battle."
"Lost and could not find their way home."
"Carried off into captivity by the Chinese devils."
Virlomi raised a hand to still them. "I will not waste their lives, if they obey me."
"You shouldn't go to war, lady," said one old crone. "There's no good in it. Look at you, young, beautiful. Lie down with one of our young men, or one of our old ones if you want, and make babies."
"Someday," said Virlomi, "I'll choose a husband and make babies with him. But today my husband is India, and he has been swallowed by a tiger. I must make the tiger sick, so he will throw my husband up."
They giggled, some of them, at this image. But others were very grave.
"How will you do this?"
"I will prepare the men so they don't die because of mistakes. I will assemble all the weapons we need, so no man is wasted because he is unarmed. I will bide my time, so we don't bring down the wrath of the tiger upon us, until we're ready to hurt them so badly that they never recover from the blow."
"You didn't happen to bring a nuclear weapon with you, lady?" asked the crone. Clearly something of an unbeliever.
"It's an offense against God to use such things," said Virlomi. "The Muslim God was burned out of his house and turned his face against them because they used such weapons against each other."